The U.S. Green Building Council, creator of the LEED green building standards, says there are 70 local or regional green home building programs across the country. But it says its LEED program is the only national rating system that clearly defines and establishes benchmarks for green homes.

LEED has established an exhaustive list of criteria that must be met for a house to meet its standards. The work has to be reviewed by an independent, LEED certified inspector, who charges fees ranging from $500 to $2,000 per house.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency started another national standards program with Energy Star in 1992. It was a voluntary labeling program for energy-efficient products. Energy Star was later extended to cover new homes and commercial buildings.

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Homes will be Energy Star certified if they can be made 15 percent more efficient than homes built simply to code, through the use of insulation, high performance windows, sealing holes and cracks and the use of energy-efficient heating and cooling systems. In Rhode Island, 36 contractors are certified to build Energy Star homes.

The National Association of Home Builders is promoting its own national green standards, which are being developed this spring. They will be voluntary and supervised by individual builders. Details are not public yet.

Thomas E. McNulty, president of the Rhode Island Builders Association, insists local builders have used energy-saving windows and more insulation for years.

He said contractors are fearful of efforts elsewhere in the country to mandate LEED building standards in some communities or for some buildings.

One Rhode Island developer announced that he plans to build 12 Energy Star houses in South Kingstown soon.

Three years ago, some leading green builders got industrywide attention for their critique that concluded the LEED standard is too expensive, too complex and too bureaucratic and that there is often a disconnect between its very specific allocation of points to evaluate building construction methods and actual environmental benefit.

South Kingstown architect Thomas Weber argues that getting third-party certification is an advantage of the LEED standards. For the Narragansett house, he paid a LEED expert in Massachusetts $2,500 to review his work and the lengthy checklist that specifies what has been completed. When the job is done, $2,000 will be refunded.

“I know what the NAHB is doing,” Weber said. “They are trying to remove some paperwork. But once you do, you lose a certain measure of confidence. If you buy a LEED house, there is a certain level of confidence because it’s been certified by a third party. LEED is really that stamp of approval — like the organic label on produce.

“I think the NAHB is a form of self-policing. I feel good about LEED and the USGBC because it is done by a variety of professionals who come from varied backgrounds.”

The Green Building Council includes architects, developers, engineers, contractors, government agencies and others representing some 13,500 organizations.

Contrary to what local builders say, many parts of the country are way ahead of Rhode Island in doing green building, Weber says.

In fact, the Green Building Council reports that more than 540 houses around the country are LEED certified and another 12,940 have registered and are in some stage of development.

But in Rhode Island, LEED certification has been sought for just 20 other projects.

The first is the South Providence Development Corp.’s building in Providence, certified in 2004. Also on the list is a dining hall at the University of Rhode Island, a residence hall at Rhode Island College, and the new Pell Library & Ocean Exploration Center now under construction at the University of Rhode Island’s Bay campus. Some, such as a new Rhode Island State Police headquarters in Cranston, had been proposed for certification, but are no longer to be built.

Most of the certification proposals were submitted in the last year, reflecting how recent the green building trend is in Rhode Island.

plord@projo.com